Day 13 - Leaving Alberta for British Columbia

Travel   From: Jasper NP, AB   To: Prince George, BC   Distance: 247 mi (397 km)   Travel time w/brks: 8 hr 35   Distance since start: 3,991 mi (6,418 km)

Monday 7/3/2006

We decided to sleep a bit late this morning, since we did not feel any real rush to get on with our next leg. I also has a growing concern that we're seeing more and more wild animals near the road early in the morning. We stopped at the dump station, to get rid of some gray water and trash. When I got ready to dump, I discovered that the valve had not been completely shut on the trailer so when he took off the cap a 4 inch jet of dirty water came right out. It was very fortunate I did not dump black water. We didn't leave our campground until 9:40. The road towards Prince George is not all that interesting, considering what we have seen so far. There is not a lot of traffic and there are no real extreme hills to climb. From time to time we have to slow down on hills. The speed limit varies from 90km/h (56 mph) down to 70km/h (45 mph), depending on road conditions.

We stopped for a late lunch at what appeared to be a gas station being modernized. It was quite hot outside. Next to where we parked a man worked on building a bigger log style building. He was doing it all by himself. He used a flatbed truck with a crane on it to lift the large logs in place. Erik went over and asked him how long it would take to complete the building. The man responded that it would take about 8 more months. With the very short summer they have here, this means that a big chunk of the building season must be done in cold weather.

When we got to our campground, we discovered that we had left a roof vent open since our late lunch stop. The campground was not very interesting at all. It was basically a mobile home park with a few camp sites on it. It was nice and clean, but looked a bit worn down. Isabella called Sam and Megan, back in Merrimack. They were off playing mini golf. I went down a few miles the road and filled one of our propane tanks and fueled the truck for the next leg. Although expensive, the price of diesel was only CDN 1.019/Lit compared to CDN 1.14P/Lit up at the Saskatchewan crossing. He also used that opportunity to ask the gas station attendant about a good supermarket nearby. Erik and me went down into town to stock up on supplies. The store that had been recommended to me was fantastic. It was like a large Carrefour back in France. The food selection was great. Erik and me had a hard time to decide and they knew there was limited space in the fridge.

For dinner Erik prepared spaghetti with blue cheese sauce, using some fresh blue cheese we had picked up at the store earlier. I had some difficulties getting the big awning back up. It was like the rear end of it did not want to roll up. After a fair amount of investigating, it turned out that the rear supporting arm had been sufficiently bent that it held down the awning enough on the rear side that it did not want to lock in place. That arm initially got bent from the awning filling with water a few years back when we went up to visit Vincent Lacasse and Andre Viens, on the Vermont side of Quebec. I then worked with Vincent to bend it back from that incident but it is possible that the bending back has caused some metal fatigue that gradually has caused the arm to kink again. We'll need to keep an eye on things.

This campground has a WiFi near the office, but it only works when you are next to the office. As is the case with many campgrounds, they are not setup right. The owner had just left it with an SSID of "default" and, as it turns out, someone else closer to our trailer had a different WiFi network also called "default". I ended up buying a one day access pass from a local provider. We were able to have both of our laptops on the network at the same time for the price of one session. But the drawback was that once I tried to upload changes to the diary he discovered that the network provider was blocking the ftp port. So he drove down to the campground office and sat in the truck to upload using their "default" network.

Erik also caught up on laundry. Not much else happened that day.

Campground   Name: Sintich Trailer & RV Park   Our hookups: Water, 30 Amp and Sewer   WiFi: Yes and several bars ($4.95/day)   GSM service: Yes   TV Channels: Plenty (cable)   Cost: $25/night   Reservation mode: Phone call

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist.